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[jordan-garland]

An Interview with HEXA

In April 2015, composer and director of the Room40 imprint Lawrence English and frontman Jamie Stewart of experimental group Xiu Xiu performed an auditory response to director David Lynch’s photographs of deteriorating industrial sites and factories as part of the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s David Lynch: Between Two Worlds exhibition. As HEXA, the two released their soundtrack to Lynch’s photographs, titled Factory Photographs, in November 2016. The album is a dark and harrowing piece of music that evokes the same feelings of decay and coarseness that Lynch’s photographs of the skeletal factories expressed. On the 16th of February, just before HEXA would present their soundtrack live in Bristol’s Lantern in Colston Hall, I had the opportunity to sit with Lawrence and Jamie to discuss their collaboration, their influences, where music stands as an art form, how sound affects and occupies the body, their new solo albums (Cruel Optimism and FORGET), and their future projects.

I wanted to get some background on how the project came together as HEXA and how you were approached to do the performance at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Lawrence English: Actually we were kind of doing things before that and there is actually a still-unreleased 10-inch that exists that [Jamie] may or may not even remember now after the years it’s been waiting to come out.

Jamie Stewart: I remember, I remember.

LE: It’s actually a project with Basic House, so we did a split 10-inch with this group in Berlin. There was an artist that made the cover and it was a collaborative process and then we didn’t actually get around to it. We sort of developed some other things, but it was just floating, probably because we were both busy. Then this opportunity with the Factory Photographs commission came up and I think it just lended the focus that it needed, just to really apply ourselves to something, and also having a deadline is a wonderful thing. It’s a brutally wonderful thing. It just came together around that and it was really helpful.

Did David Lynch have any sort of involvement with it or have you heard from him afterwards what he thinks of how you’ve interpreted his photographs?

JS: [Lawrence] had more interaction on that than I did.

LE: You did meet him in LA, right?

JS: I was too shy. Shayna and Angela [of Xiu Xiu] met him, but I didn’t meet him. I did stand next to him.

LE: He came out to Brisbane before the exhibition opened. There was the exhibition opening, then a few weeks later, Jamie and Xiu Xiu came down to do the Music from Twin Peaks then we did HEXA the following day. He didn’t actually see the performance, but he was sent the documentation from the performance. He’s been incredibly supportive to us and certainly very generous to me when I did meet him, because I had a sort of rambling confession about how important the Eraserhead sound design was to me when I was 15-years-old.

Factory Photographs is very similar to the sound of Eraserhead, I found.

LE: Yeah, I think it’s probably because a lot of those photos originated around the same time. Obviously, they were part of an ongoing series, but those early ones from New Jersey and some of the other US locations were very much around that same time. He’s been super generous to us and very supportive and he gave us the carte blanche to continue the project beyond that initial commission.

JS: And allowed us to use the reproduction of the photograph for the cover, which was a surprise and generous delight.

Have you two influenced each other? Obviously, you’ve been working together for a while now, so I was wondering if Lawrence’s work has influenced Xiu Xiu and vice versa.

JS: Oh, tremendously.

LE: It’s a mutual fan club, come on.

JS: It is one of the purest and rarest delights to get to play with somebody who you’re also a fan of. You play and you listen to them and go, “He is really good. Oh wait, I’m playing with him too, yes!” Several of Lawrence’s records are amongst my favourite. Completely outside of our friendship, I listen to him way more frequently than I admit to him.

LE: It’s likewise. Because we both have new solo records out now, I think we’ve probably been on a similar timeline so there have been a lot of interactions. Jamie was one of the first people to listen to Cruel Optimism.

JS: Lawrence was, I think, the first person I sent our new record, FORGET, to.

LE: So he came back to me and said, “Look, it’s shit, you’ve just got to completely redo it.” So I did.

JS: I didn’t say that. It is a supremely great record.

LE: It’s important. I think that actually critical feedback is really useful. Obviously there’s a friendship component to it, but it’s actually important to have people that can listen critically and probably understand the context of where it’s coming from and can kind of situate it in a way where it’s not just ‘there’s an aesthetical component, there’s a technical component’, where you can bring that together.

JS: Particularly someone you not only trust, but also respect. If some fuckhead from the aforementioned New Jersey writes a shitty review, you can choose to or not to take it to heart. But if there’s a musician who’s not only your friend, but someone whose work you admire, you believe what they say to you and it can be extraordinarly helpful.

I can imagine since you’re both prolific and experimental in your music, that plays a part in it as well.

JS: I think in the Venn diagram of what we’re doing, there’s a lot of crossover. We have a lot of other similar interests outside of music too, so it’s easy to come up with, this is a preposterous thing to say, a language of critique and advice that the other person can understand, because there’s a lot of things outside of music that we can reference that we both have a connection to and an interest in.

LE: It’s actually really important, generally, the idea of being critical. I think this very much goes for music journalism. Music isn’t necessarily addressed in the same way that the other art forms are and I think that’s actually a huge problem. A lot of that comes out the way that music was situated in the mid-20th century-

JS: And continues to be.

LE: Yes. The idea of the single is this kind of twisting point where suddenly music is extracted out of the idea of it being a non-representational art form into it being entertainment. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with music being entertaining, but I think there’s a problem if it doesn’t exist beyond it’s entertainment value. Quite often, I’m really impressed when I read something from somewhere and I actually have to say that quite recently I’ve read a couple of pieces where people are engaging with the material in a way that’s actually quite sophisticated and it’s really refreshing.

JS: “Refreshing,” is the exact word to describe when you read a thoughtful review. It’s sad that it’s refreshing, it shouldn’t be refreshing!

LE: No, it should be the status quo!

JS: But it is incredibly refreshing to read something like, “Oh, this person cares about music and they’re thinking about it! They’re not just trying to be a snarky internet fiend.”

LE: I think in the visual arts, there’s a much more heavy interest.

JS: Interestingly, in the visual arts, sometimes it goes too far in the other direction!

LE: Yes, absolutely, there can be a concept for the sake of itself. But, I think there is a real value in that critical discorse. I think that music is an opportunity to have a conversation, like Factory Photographs for me. I know David Lynch is very much taken with the aesthetic intent of what those images are, but for me when I look at them there’s so much political overlay in what they represent, particularly because of the times he captured the photographs.

JS: And region. There was the same economic failure happening in two diametrically opposed economic systems at relatively the same point. You blew it, both sides!

I find that your music, both together and your solo works, has a raw emotion to it, but it’s also a vulnerable sound, especially Factory Photographs. The images themselves are decay and, like you said, with what was going on politically. Is that something that you aim to get across in your music or a sort of byproduct as well?

JS: For me, it’s the primary point of making music. In everything that I’ve ever worked on, the goal for me is to have there be some intense and, hopefully, meaningful attachment to the emotion. And that’s what I want to get out of music as a music fan as well.

LE: When I was younger, I had a strange position I suppose you could say which was I tried to behave in an apolitical way and at the time, I didn’t have the sophistication to recognise that, obviously, being apolitical is a political gesture. I kind of do that the same way approaching the work. I was interested in how the receiver interpreted the work entirely. I tried to make it, particularly with the experimental stuff, in a way that was about this kind of flat horizon, a desert to walk through. It can be beautiful, but it can also be confronting. I think increasingly I’ve stepped away from that in the last ten years and I’m much more interested in the idea of affect and the complexity of the internal relationship you have with work. There’s these things that we feel and experience and listen to, those kind of relationships are so unable to be understood, really. Like, why do we feel a certain way when tones are played? Why does temper affect the way we can approach or not approach work? I think increasingly I’m really conscious of what that means and how profound it can be, actually, as a listener to music myself and for other people engaging. I think about, in concert particularly, the bodily effect and Factory Photographs is very much about this idea of bodily effect.

JS: Music, although ephemeral, is a physical force. Something is moving through the room that you can feel, and therefore you’re essentially touching it. A lot of it is relating to that. A factory produces something and it can destroy a body or it can allow us to go on with our life, i.e. feed their children or put a roof over their head. It is very, very much a nod to the factory producing something and it ending up having a direct and physical result on somebody’s life. It could just completely obliterate their fingers, or it can put their kids through school.

LE: Or both!

JS: Or both. In a completely different way, music does that. Both of the things affect people’s bodies, this set more than anything I’ve ever done; I’m feeling much more blanketed by the sound which is, as a physical sensation, quite wonderful. It is a lot like being high. When you get high, you feel a vibration from the beginning to the end of the extremities of your body. Standing next to two incredibly huge speakers playing, seeing that Lawrence has cut all of the high-end off and jacked up all of the bass, my body feels squished in the nicest way.

LE: Cheap highs from Lawrence English.

JS: Great mixtape!

I touched on how you’ve influenced each other, but have you got any other musical influences or would you say that it’s more life experiences?

JS: It’s just Lawrence for me.

LE: I love a lot of music, don’t get me wrong, I love a great deal of music. But also art. Today, for example, we went to see Incoming, the new Richard Mosse exhibition that my friend Ben [Frost] did the sound design for, and that was actually incredibly effective as a work.

JS: It was really, really, really well done.

LE: And I think that kind of thing for me resonates hugely in the kind of work I wanna do, and it’s not exactly like a transcription of the same feeling. I can give you a good example that I haven’t really spoken about much with Cruel Optimism, but a large part of the initial investigation into this idea of obsession that was part of the way I approached Cruel Optimism came out of this one book called Karasu by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase. It’s basically a book of photographs of crows and it’s an incredible book that he made after his wife left him. He basically spent ten years photographing these particular parts of Japan as a way of kind of, I guess, trying to forget his wife, because before that he’d spend most of his time photographing her so suddenly she was gone and there was this huge gap there and it was like ‘how can I fill this gap?’ The photos are incredible and he lived this incredible life, twenty years of which was in a coma from 1992 to 2012 when he died. Twenty years he was in a coma and his wife came to see him every day, every week, whatever. There are incredible kinds of things which, for me, resonate just as strongly as some of the experiences I’ve had listening to a band. I had this period, about ten days, where I saw Swans and My Bloody Valentine, both of which I had wanted to see for about fifteen or twenty years or longer in some cases. To have that experience, actually, for me it resolved a bunch of questions I had had about performance, because I had essentially stopped performing. Those groups made me recognise what that relation is between the audience and the performer, and a sound system in a room and a body. Those things are really meaningful and I think there’s stuff to be extracted from everything. Touring is wonderfully inspirational, because you suddenly get a different perspective on how other people live, do what they do, and it helps you contextualise who it is you are, what you want to do, how you want to engage, and what’s your way of being in the world.

JS: When you have the incredibly privileged opportunity to go to as many cities as people who tour frequently do, you are able to ingest the fragile diversity of what it happens to be and I think part of the obligation of being in a privileged position is to pay as much attention to it as you can and turn it into the best thing that you can from being given the gift of being exposed to a hundred times more than most people, unfortunately, have the opportunity to be exposed to.

LE: It’s very true. It is a privilege, there’s no doubt. We have incredibly privileged lives, most of us do generally, but there are degrees of privilege in this sort of ridiculous life.

JS: I think in terms of the wide range of stimulus that touring musicians who make the effort to travel the world get a chance to see, it is an extraordinary privilege.

Did your work with HEXA affect the way you approached your new solo albums, Cruel Optimism and FORGET?

JS: It’s affecting the way that I’m working on the follow-up to FORGET tremendously.

LE: I would say definitely, I developed a bunch of new techniques that I’ve never done before making the HEXA record.

JS: I did too. Technically, there was a lot of new tricks. Aesthetically, it’s affecting the next record.

LE: All these things come through each other in various ways, and sometimes it’s really acute the way it’s pronounced and other times it’s just completely incidental, like a kind of setting on a compressor.

JS: It really is stuff like that. For two people who at the exact same moment, as soon as you turned the recorder on, snapped their fingers, that’s really one of the main things we’re looking for.

LE: How can we snap our fingers more efficiently or slightly more nuanced, a bit higher maybe.

Do you have any plans to collaborate again?

JS: HEXA’s an ongoing concern.

LE: We’ve actually started work on the next one. I think in the next few months. Maybe this year, late in the year. There’s some work to be done. It will be interesting to see another collaborative project.

Check out the singles “Wondering”, “Jenny GoGo”, and “Get Up” from Xiu Xiu’s forthcoming album FORGET. Stream the album courtesy of Noisey and buy the album from Polyvinyl Records or bandcamp.

Stream and buy Lawrence English’s new album Cruel Optimism from Room40 or bandcamp.

Photo credits: HEXA, David Lynch, and Masahisa Fukase.

[jordan-garland]

James Blake at the O2 Academy Bristol

Before closing out an exceptionally productive year, James Blake took to the stage at the O2 Academy Bristol with a triumphant, slick, and relevant set that showcased the young producer’s talent both in the studio and live in concert.

It’s been a busy year for James. Between releasing his third studio album The Colour in Anything through his own label 1-800 Dinosaur with five hours notice and the subsequent tour across the United States and the United Kingdom in its support, James also lended his signature ethereal production to a range of diverse albums: from the booming OutKast-sampling “War Ready” from west-coast rapper Vince Staples’ Prima Donna EP (Vince would later hop on a remix to James’ own “Timeless”) to his crooning, dream-like solo “FORWARD” on Beyoncé’s lauded LEMONADE to providing piano-heavy backing to both of Frank Ocean’s releases Endless and Blonde.

With James having his hand in some of the year’s biggest releases, it might be easy for those less familiar with his own releases to let The Colour In Anything pass them by. However, they would be doing themselves a huge disservice. The album is a fantastic showcase of the evolution of James’ signature sound. Gone are the days of the bass-heavy post-dubstep vibe exhibited on early releases from the start of the decade such as the single “Air and Lack Thereof” and the CMYK EP. James now leans towards contemporary R&B and pop whilst retaining the electronic sound that won over listeners in the first place.

However, it’s hearing these tracks played live without the aid of any laptops and backed with V-drums and electronic guitars (James made a point of acknowledging the skill that goes into the live shows before assuring the crowd that he wasn’t bragging) that elevates them to another level. Highlights from the album such as “Always” and “Love Me In Whatever Way” take on a new life as James extends sequences and accentuates them with added details, like a subtle bass boost or stuttering hi-hats. In particular, “I Hope My Life (1-800 Mix)” is vastly improved on as James mixes the dark synth-heavy track with frenetic and over-bearing “Voyeur” from his previous album Overgrown in 2013.

Whilst the set does an excellent job of showing off the new tracks (which James remarked are the only ones from the album that they’ve managed to figure out how to play live so far), it also served as a chance to breathe after the slew of collaborations and solo releases from the start of the year and continuing still, with the release of Travis Scott’s Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight (James provided vocals to opener “the ends”) the month before. James performed some of the biggest hits of his career thus far with “Life Round Here”, “Limit to Your Love”, and “Retrograde”, all of which got the loudest reactions from the crowd, though everyone seemed enamoured with every song performed. The aformentioned “FORWARD” also made an unexpected appearance, with a live delivery that puts the already fantastic studio recording to shame. Grime artist and former Roll Deep member Trim (whose debut album 1-800 DINOSAUR Presents: Trim was also released this year with production by James on track “RPG”) also made an appearance to perform “Confidence Boost (Harmonimix)”, a eclectic but inspiring call to believe in oneself.

By the end of the set, the crowd had still managed to not have gotten enough, managing to coax James to return to the stage to perform an intimate encore with performances of “A Case of You” and “Measurements”. The tracks bring a peaceful end to a set that was sometimes dizzying, other times thoughtful and introspective. In a way, a perfect metaphor for James Blake’s 2016.

Setlist

“Always”, The Colour In Anything

“Life Round Here”, Overgrown

“Choose Me”, The Colour In Anything

“Timeless”, The Colour In Anything

“Limit to Your Love”, James Blake

“Our Love Comes Back”, Overgrown

“My Willing Heart”, The Colour In Anything

“Love Me In Whatever Way”, The Colour In Anything

“Stop What You’re Doing (James Blake Remix)” by Untold

“FORWARD” by Beyoncé featuring James Blake, LEMONADE

“I Need A Forest Fire” featuring Bon Iver, The Colour In Anything

“I Hope My Life (1-800 Mix)”, The Colour In Anything

“Voyeur”, Overgrown

“I Mind”, James Blake

“The Colour In Anything”

“Modern Soul”, The Colour In Anything

“Retrograde”, Overgrown

“The Wilhelm Scream”, James Blake

“A Case of You”, Enough Thunder

“Measurements”, James Blake

Photo credit: Martin Thompson

[jordan-garland]

Simple Things Festival 2016

Simple Things Festival is still a relatively new event in the festival landscape, but this year’s bigger-than-ever showcase of a diverse range of genres all fluidly working together shows that it’s a force to be reckoned with. This year’s festival being only the fifth in its young life, it would be almost expected that the many venues around the city would be playing host to smaller underground acts, and in a sense, they are. But it would be a massive understatement with the eclectic mix of hip-hop, electronic, and indie rock artists ranging from up-and-coming stars to keep an eye on, to heavy hitters and legends of their respective genres. Early in the evening, Jessy Lanza hypnotises the audience in SWX with her dream-pop melodies. Later in the night, experimental hip-hop outfit Death Grips launch an assault on Colston Hall. The same venue that would host Japanese noise rock band Boris in the middle of the night would earlier be occupied by legendary electronic artist Squarepusher and his band Shobaleader One. It’s the event’s varied nature that gives justification to the festival’s own description of itself as a programme of artistic and musical innovation. It’s what sets Simple Things apart from the crowd of homogenous British festivals. It’s what provides such a wide range of dizzying highlights.

Three Trapped Tigers

Fresh off their second studio album Silent Earthling, the experimental noise rock trio take the stage in a converted fire station aptly named The Station. As one would expect, the venue is full of character and is reflective of the band who present a genre that is all too common associated with long, droning pieces in a more exciting way. While other bands such as Xiu Xiu build up epic pieces of distorted and lo-fi rock over the length of a song, Three Trapped Tigers aren’t afraid to be bold and play with force. Their set is devoid of any gaps for the most part as they continuously smash through cuts off their latest record including the standout title track and “Engrams”, and also revisiting highlights from their earlier works such as “Rainbow Road”. With adrenaline-pumping sound, claustrophobic strobe lighting, and a unique stage, the trio produced a treat of a live show, something that isn’t as common in the genre. Listen to the title track of their latest album

Iglooghost

Testament to the festival’s diverse mix of genres, following Three Trapped Tigers was electronic producer Iglooghost. After pelting Flying Lotus with cassette tapes at a concert, the Irish producer found himself signed to FlyLo’s Brainfeeder record label, a label that has steadily built itself up to be well-respected with links to giants such as Kendrick Lamar and George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic. Iglooghost’s breakout EP Chinese Nü Year instantly highlighted him as one to watch, implementing and fluidly mixing elements of footwork, grime, and garage. And with such an interesting background to the start of his career, it was unsurprising to see him perform so enthusiastically throughout the entirety of his set. Weaving in and out of basslines and featuring various interesting drops in a setlist as diverse as his studio work, the producer made it seem effortless as he controlled the crowd through ups and downs. Listen to a recent mix of Iglooghost’s.

Warpaint

After a short hiatus following their acclaimed 2014 self-titled album, Warpaint decided to explore their own individual musical pursuits. Upon their reunion for their latest record Heads Up, the group decided that they would take this a step further and record sessions in pairs or solo. It was an exciting idea and a breath of fresh air into the stifling indie rock landscape where things can get a bit too same-y. However, I questioned what this would mean for their live performances. Whatever doubts I had were dispelled very shortly into their headline set in Colston Hall. While Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman would switch up the role of lead vocals, all members still performed with an ethereal harmony, shifting effortlessly between older material and some new cuts from Heads Up. The highlight of the show, however, came in the form of drummer Stella Mozgawa. It acted as a showcase of her versatility, always leading the band with rhythm but also providing bursts of intensity when needed. Listen to Warpaint’s latest single ”Whiteout”.

Death Grips

Performing last on the Colston Hall main stage, the tone was set from the moment the formidable trio casually stepped onto the stage. Drummer Zach Hill, producer Andy Morin, and frontman Stefan “Ride” Burnett appeared on stage almost as if they had gone unnoticed. The crowd waited steadily while Zach set up his modest drum set, weighed down with a bag of sand and flanked with two bags full of drumsticks. The mood immediately shifted, however, as soon as the group launched into their trademark 2011 single “Guillotine”. It lasted less than half a minute, it was only a soundcheck. But that didn’t stop the crowd from immediately forming one giant mosh pit, pushing and shoving everyone around them in a frantic display of intensity. As soon as the actual set began, it somehow became even wilder as Ride belted out harsh lyrics and guttural screams complimented by Hill’s rattling and manic drumming. But amidst all the intensity and unyielding bravado projected by the group, the setlist was more one of triumph. Performing new songs from their latest album Bottomless Pit, and a mix of fan favourites that the group have become synonymous with such as “Get Got” and “I’ve Seen Footage”, they also delved into deeper cuts such as their debut single “Full Moon (Death Classic)” and new additions from less accessible albums No Love Deep Web and Government Plates. Death Grips were relentless in their efforts to blast the Hall until the roof caved in with their ferocious intensity and stage presence. But just as quickly as they had entered, the band immediately stalked off following a full performance of “Guillotine”, leaving everyone to collect themselves and reflect on what they had just experienced. Watch Death Grips’ full set at Simple Things Festival 2016.

Photo credits: Rebecca Cleal and Ro Murphy